After nearly a decade of cutting though a jungle of bureaucratic red tape, the construction of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning’s new 47,000 square-foot Paul Milstein Hall is well underway. With little delays expected, the project should be completed by Aug. 2011, restoring University Avenue, the AAP Quad and the Arts Quad to normalcy.

As many members of the Cornell community have noticed, the portion of University Avenue stretching from East Avenue to Central Avenue is closed. As a result, a temporary road has been built connecting University Avenue with Central Avenue in order to allow access to the Johnson Art Museum and the buildings along the western side of the Arts Quad.

Curious students and faculty trickled into Sibley Hall yesterday afternoon to hear Barbara Penner, lecturer in architectural history in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, elucidate the relationship between bathrooms, social boundaries and architecture.

As Penner took the podium, the house lights fell to yield the title, “X is for An Expert on Bathrooms: Alexander Kira & Peter Greenaway’s 26 Bathrooms,” brightly projected onto the screen behind her.

The lecture featured a screening of Peter Greenaway’s 1985 film entitled Inside Rooms: 26 Bathrooms.

Approximately 50 students from the College of Architecture, Art and Planning took over the Arts Quad as part of an installation Saturday, filling the normally green space with 2,800 red straw-filled sacks (19” wide x 32” high).

The sacks will be distributed in a “10 feet by 10 feet regular grid that will follow the natural slope of the ground surface,” according to the University. Visiting critics Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrinchshausen and Yehre Suh are directing the 50 students in their Field project.

Hay Fever: Students work to fill and transport bags as part of the field project installation on the Arts Quad on Saturday.

For a college that has seen much activism in recent months in response to a lack of administrative transparency, we are appalled that such a drastic step was taken by the College of Architecture, Art and Planning by closing the Knight Visual Resources Facility.

The KVRF — which will be closing in June — served the needs of many students and faculty within AAP where the facility was housed. Garnering national prestige, the resource was one of Cornell’s most notable collections of images and visual materials.

As Dragon Day approaches, students and faculty in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning have another proverbial beast breathing down their neck — budget cuts. Like all colleges, AAP faces a 5 percent budget cut and has been steadily slicing away what the AAP administrators deem as unnecessary and spendthrift facets of the college.

“AAP is in a somewhat different budgetary situation than many of the other colleges in that we were already facing a structural deficit at the beginning of this fiscal year,” stated AAP Dean Kent Kleinman in an e-mail. “Our current budget includes a number of reductions over 2008 in central areas such as facilities, maintenance, communications and general expenses.”

After students protested earlier this week over the lack of transparency within the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, students, faculty and administrators gathered yesterday in Sibley Hall to discuss concerns regarding the future path of the college.

Issues raised included the selection process of a new architecture department chair, the lack of tenured faculty, the relationship between permanent and visiting faculty, the transparency of the administration and the morale of the college.

The meeting came just several days after architecture students plastered signs inside and outside Sibley Hall criticizing the College for insufficient communication.

Calls for “no more incest” and a “new search” were pinned to the face of Sibley Hall early yesterday morning as part of an ongoing advocacy for openness by architecture students.

“The goal of all of this is to gain transparency within the school and to start a really rich dialogue between students and faculty,” said Andy Linn ’11.

Protest banner: Architecture students posted a banner outside of Sibley Hall yesterday. The banner was put up around 5:00 a.m. and taken down by 8:30 a.m.

To the Editor:

Re: “AAP Dean Urges Milstein Construction to Move Forward,” Letters, Feb. 9

If studio space is to an architecture student what laboratory space is to a chemistry student then what is no space to an art student?

As the Sep. 30 deadline for internal reviews of departments and colleges quickly approaches, the University — including administrators and faculty — must respect the interest of students and remember the positive impact students’ ideas can muster. Day Hall needs only to look at the Department of Architecture to find an example of the positive impact students can have on the future of a college.

Cornell's Board of Trustees voted unanimously on May 24 to support President David Skorton's recommendation to proceed with the construction of Milstein Hall. This green-light for the project comes after several months of contentious campus debate over whether the University should continue with Milstein Hall in the wake of its financial troubles.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Chairman of the Board of Trustees Peter Meinig ’62 said. “Every now and then, we need to make such tough decisions … You can’t shut down a university where there are programmatic imperatives.”